


The Echoing Chill

by scullyphile



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Tattoos, The X-Files Revival, mulder's couch, oversized dog, saint bernard, separated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 05:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5772382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyphile/pseuds/scullyphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully wakes up in a cold bed, alone. A prompt with Scully's tattoo, an oversized dog, and Mulder's couch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Echoing Chill

In the morning when Scully woke it was ungodly cold. Goosebumps tickled her arms, and she dove beneath the blankets. She squeezed her eyelids closed as tightly as she could, as if that might prevent Mulder from sneaking into her thoughts, from reminding her of how much she missed him.

Readjusting herself to life alone was the hardest part of walking away. She thought it would be the act of leaving, but that strange combination of adrenaline and relief was not nearly as difficult as she anticipated. To fill her changed existence, she had needed to keep busy, to fill her time as fully with activities: work, chores, exercise.

At times she did not know what to do with herself. Her life was a cavern; it echoed. When the heat failed to come on, again, there was no one to cuddle up to for warmth. There was no one to elbow, to nudge out to investigate the furnace so she wouldn’t have to.

A long, heavy sigh burst from her. There was still half an hour until her alarm would go off. She could get up now and check on the heat, or she could stay cocooned a little longer.

As she dozed off, she fell into a recurring dream she had about her tattoo. It melted like a clock in a Salvador Dalí painting and slid down her body, over the curve of her buttocks, down the back of her thigh, over the slope of her calf, until she shook it from her heel and it hit the wall with a smack.

She heard the buzzing of her phone as it played a tune dubbed the “morning flower alarm.” Blankets flung aside, she reached out into the abyss. The cold caused the muscles in her back to tense, her nipples to harden, her eyes to open wide.

Alert would hardly describe the burning focus of her mind in that moment. To find the cause of this frigid nightmare was her one and only goal in life. She became an unstoppable force. When she reached the thermostat, she found there was nothing wrong with the furnace at all. It was simply turned off.

Mulder would suggest a ghost, and she had to admit she didn’t have a better explanation--yet. She was alone, not prone to sleepwalking. Her agile mind ran through the list of possibilities, scratching out one after another. It was trying to ignore the fact that his name had popped up again--trying and failing.

Several months into their separation, someone told her that Mulder had gotten a dog, a Saint Bernard named Bartholomew. He must have gotten the dog to keep him warm on cold mornings like this. Picturing Mulder sitting on his couch with such an enormous animal almost made her laugh through her shivering. Instead, a wry smile appeared on her face.

Scully walked back to the bedroom and picked up her phone, clicking on her conversation with Mulder. Maybe it was time to test the waters of their relationship again. Maybe they were warm; maybe the undertow was not as strong.

His last text to her was from months before. “I miss you” was all it said. She had seen it but not replied. She knew that Mulder knew she had read it.

“I miss you, too,” she wrote. She stood staring at her words for several beats before closing her messaging app without hitting send. 


End file.
